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SNAPSHOTS OF BRISTOL’S CULTUR AL LIFE

THE ONLY WAY IS UP

2020 may have landed with a gurt big sticker reading CANCELLED slapped across it, but Bristol didn’t earn its reputation as the UK’s smartest, most creative city by meekly accepting the status quo. If there’s a clever way around a problem, Bristol will find it.

Enter Virtually Upfest; an online version of the beloved South Bristol street art festival. It’s been designed in a collaboration with Zubr – not, as we first assumed, the name of a graf artist we weren’t cool enough to recognise, but a cutting-edge augmented and virtual reality studio based in Montpelier. Using retro graphics inspired by the 1980s movie Tron, Zubr will create a virtual world that runs from the Upfest gallery down to the Tobacco Factory,. The tour will take in 30 new pieces of art, all specifically commissioned for the virtual world from top UK artists, including many from Bristol.

Oh, and more good news: subject to a lot of small-print conditions guaranteed to give Upfest’s Steve Hayles grey hairs, the festival will return in real life to BS3 next summer. All we can do now is spray . . .

Virtually Upfest runs 25-27 September, and is compatible with both VR headsets as well as mobile phones and laptops. The portal to Virtually Upfest is via upfest.co.uk